Castles on the Beach
by simplyprologue
Summary: Sandor Clegane and Sansa Stark are dead. The only thing they have left is to live. A teeny tiny ASoS AU which puts our pair back together again in the Saltpans. Rated T for Sandor's mouth.


**A/N: **Written for Lunatic Silver's birthday, back awhile. I never got around to posting it here. A little bit of sweet, and a little bit of angst. And, as always, there's room for a sequel which I may or may not already be writing because she bought me for the auction on the sansaxsandor community on livejournal.

* * *

He thinks it a fever dream, at first. Or that he's died and maybe, somehow, wound up in one of the Seven Heavens. Not that he believes in them. Or the Seven Hells.

(Sandor Clegane finds comfort in believing that there are no gods to sentence him to this fate, or to judge his life as a test.

It's better this way.)

And then he hears her voice, singing that fucking song.

Maybe he's back at King's Landing, back at the battle, when green fire danced across the startled sky. Maybe this is hell, if he has to listen to that song, over and over again in _her _voice, be reminded of all he had done, hadn't done, should have done.

Sansa Stark—his salvation and his damnation. Sandor is convinced he is going to burn in hell—and it is going to be the girl's fire-red hair. He feels drunk, the world hazy and dark, feet weighed down by the alcohol, mind disjointed and all verbosity gone.

All that hasn't been robbed from his is feeling—the feeling of fire in his blood, the hot burn of pain at his fingers and toes, curling up in his bones and gut, flaring through his body until he is but the boy with his face in the flames again, crying and screaming as the pain builds and builds and threatens to burst and shatter him—

He fucking knows what it feels like to die, and this is it.

But her voice breaks through, like a calm breeze, a cool cloth on his forehead, fighting down the flames that consume him. He dreams of fire, but Sandor Clegane would much rather burn in her hair. He dreams of fire, and Sansa Stark is the only thing that can bank the flames. She saves him from the inferno and sings to him, cradling his head in her lap as the battle goes on around them; his knife far from his grasp and far from her neck and all he can feel is the cool autumn air and her thin, graceful fingers in his hair.

And then it no longer feels as if he is dead. As if he is dying.

Maybe that means he is dead.

He is made up cinders and ash and fire-hardened things already. Maybe he's been dead all along.

And he believes it, drifting—maybe this is oblivion, there is no heaven and no hell and this is all he has—and feels nothing.

Time passes.

But he knows nothing of it.

* * *

They were lucky to come upon him when they did. She and Mya had stumbled across Arya as they made their way through the Saltpans, and it was extremely lucky at all that they had recognized her—the scrap of a child, the waifish boy, of all things, that she had become—and stopped her when they did.

And then Sansa thinks of how slim a chance it had been that they had found _him_, unconscious and all but gone underneath the tree, and then the Elder Brother who had found _them_ as Sansa tried to tend to his wounds right there on the ground.

And now they're here, safe and hidden and warm and fed on the Quiet Isle, nothing but thankful refugees seeking sanctuary from the world. The panicked weeks following her escape the Eyrie are over, traveling through the Vale and the Riverlands with Mya Stone after Lady Lysa pushed Littlefinger through the Moon Door and then turned on her—it is over. It is over and no one can tell her to do anything anymore, make her barter for her survival or surrender herself for her life.

And Sansa Stark has found her sister. Her family.

And Sandor Clegane will live.

She wonders why she has spent so much time at his bedside, reading to him from books from the Elder Brother's library, singing to him all the songs and hymns she knows, mopping the sweat from his brow and combing his long, tangled black hair from his face as he convulsed and muttered in his sleep.

(She knows, she does, but it's improper and almost too much to hope, that perhaps he thought of her too, but he cried out _little bird_ in the grip of the fever and even _Sansa_, once, and it was far too much—far too much like the songs and more than enough to anchor her to his side and anchor him in her life.)

She thinks of what would have happened had she left with him, listening to Arya tell her the tale. She sits, shocked, when Arya tells her about how they were there when mother and Robb were killed, how they had barely missed it all.

(Sansa Stark is dead. And so is Sandor Clegane.)

And how he had kept her safe.

_No one would hurt you again, or I'd kill them._

Sansa sits by his bedside again, and takes his hand in hers. Maybe today he'll wake up, she thinks. Maybe today.

(She tries not to think about how the Elder Brother warned her that he may not wake up ever again. He must. He must wake up.)

* * *

It's the fucking fire again.

Licking at his legs, clawing its way from his feet to his ankles and sinking its nails into his thighs. But today it does not sit on his chest, threatening to suffocate him, suck the life out from his lips. He feels the vibration of a moan in his chest, and then the weight of something sinking down next to him.

Sandor wants to open his eyes, but cannot.

So he hasn't died.

Fucking great.

And her voice is there again, and he feels his brow furrow. Why is her voice still here? The hands—small, cool, soft, like before—brush across his forehead, her thumb stroking his burnt cheek in a way that isn't entirely disagreeable.

But it cannot be Sansa Stark. Because Sansa Stark is married to Tyrion Lannister, she is not here, with him. Highborn ladies do not leave their husbands to tend to dying dogs. Highborn ladies do not have anything to do with dogs like him to begin with. He's just dying. And dreaming. And burning, the flames creating cruel illusions in his mind as his life burns up, his body crumbling into ash.

He hears her voice again through the hazy inferno, trilling some song he has never heard before. It ends, and he is still trapped inside his body, the pain, the fucking bloody horrible pain, his jailor and his master, now only in his leg and perhaps in his head.

He moans again, and this time he can hear it rumbling from his chest.

The woman hushes him, wending her fingers through his hair like his mother and sister used to before Gregor broke them too; bends down to brush her soft lips against his forehead. "Hush," she says. "Just sleep, ser."

* * *

He stirs, and she is hopeful.

It has almost been a full turn of the moon since their arrival, and the Elder Brother no longer holds onto hope. Mya tries to convince her of his coming death, and even Arya has become comforting, trying to lure Sansa away from his bedside.

_But he saved us_, Sansa says. _We must save him. We must—he cannot be alone_.

She remembers the terrified man he was the night of the battle, the broken boy—perhaps, not a man, just a scared little boy. She sung to him then, afraid, and had wanted him to calm and to leave her and to go away. She understands it now, that sort of fear. Or at least she thinks. Not the violence, or the hatred, but she understands the fear.

She does not forgive him. But she is still drawn to him. Tethered. He had stayed with her when all others had left, gave her small kindnesses when all others gave her was cruelty. He had given her the truth when everything else was lies.

She owes him this, at least.

(She sings him his song, over and over and again and again.)

She wants to give him this.

He moans again, louder.

They are far from the wildfire flames, here on the Quiet Isle. The sea blows cool breezes through the windows, the smell of damp earth outside wet and warm. They are both far from where they both started, but perhaps, Sansa thinks, the gods have brought them together here for a reason.

She can save him, she thinks.

If only he would live.

* * *

Hours later, Sandor Clegane opens his eyes.

And changes his mind again.

He _is _dead, he thinks, bringing a hand so he can sink his fingers into Sansa Stark's hair. He is warm, and it is quiet, and dry, and she sits by his side, sleeping peacefully with her head resting near his stomach, face pale but healthy in a plain roughspun dress.

Battered, but not diminished. And somehow near his side. He can only be dead.

He freezes when she blinks wearily up at him, unfolding herself from the chair, a slow smile blooming across her face. She reaches to him, the feeling of her hand on his face not at all distant and far too real and familiar and nothing like dreaming.

And it strikes him that maybe this is real.

"Good morning, ser," she says, voice deeper than the last time they met, more mature, more womanly, but from what he can see, all of her is.

Somehow he smiles at her, the expression unpracticed and ugly. "Not a ser."

Her smile is something like a sob, and she brushes her hair back from her face, tossing the long auburn waves over her shoulder, hiding her face in her hands. He reaches up, his grip startlingly weak, and pulls her hands from her face. And gods, is she beautiful, just like she always was and always will be, and he is too weak and delirious and just feverish enough not to pull away from her, not to snarl, not to push her away.

The ice of her eyes and her cool fingers on his face beat away the burn, and he knows if he ever leaves this bed again, he'll never leave her side.

* * *

Sandor Clegane and Sansa Stark are dead.

The only thing they have left is to live.

* * *

**Reviews are very much appreciated.**


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